Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End (Episode 25) – A Fatal Vulnerability
Three more mages have made it to the lowest level and they have information about what they face. Will that help Frieren and Fern to come up with an effective plan or not? Either way, they need to hurry before more copies catch up!
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End (Episode 25) – A Fatal Vulnerability
What happened?
Dunste arrived on his own and revealed that Edel activated her Escape Golem and Blei bought him time by fighting Sense’s clone. He was injured but offered to share information if they worked together. Denken was a little annoyed since he had suggested that from the start. Dunste was able to tell them that the copies do not have a mind. They imitate one, but it’s not a true mind. That changes things since they were hoping for Edel to be able to use her hypnosis on it. Then, Lawine and Kanne arrive and reveal what they know. Lawine’s brother was in the advance party when they first tried to clear the dungeon. She told them about the Spiegel and how the copies would eventually gather at the bottom of the dungeon.
Frieren considered just blasting through the walls and destroying the Spiegel that way, but since her copy had placed a powerful binding spell on the door, she was sure the walls wouldn’t be much easier. That was when Fern decided to show them what Frieren’s weakness was. She asked Frieren to walk over to a wall and then she blasted her with a simple offensive spell. Denken was shocked that he hadn’t noticed it before, but everyone else seemed fairly clueless. Fern explained that Frieren can’t sense mana for a split second while she’s defending. Richter wasn’t that impressed since Frieren had so many other abilities. This seemed like something she could easily counter.
In the end, Frieren and Fern decided to enter the room alone. They would likely win if they all entered, but there would be casualties. This way they could minimize the impact on the group. Besides, the other copies would be making their way to this room and if they were caught fighting Frieren’s copy by other copies, they would all die. Inside the room, the plan was for Frieren to attack her copy head-on and keep it busy. Fern would hide after suppressing her mana while using Frieren’s flaw to escape her detection. Then, once there was an opening, she would hit it with Zoltraak.
It was just as Serie had predicted when she heard of Flamme’s death. Flamme had successfully integrated magic into human civilisation and wanted Series to lead the effort to teach humans. Serie did not like this idea, which was something Flamme had predicted. Before Frieren left, Serie asked her to walk with her. She explained that humans have such a short life by comparison that they are always in a hurry. She predicted that the world would belong to humans in one thousand years and that, one day, Frieren would either be killed by the Demon King or a human mage!
What did you think?
I absolutely love the fights in this series, which is incredible because the fights are not even the main event. Once again, we are reminded about the passing of time and how different beings view it. Elves can take a millennium to make a decision but for humans, they have to act faster. That means that their evolution as a species is quicker and will continue to exponentially grow. If you look back at our history you can clearly see what Serie was talking about. The last one hundred years of human history have seen so much growth compared to the thousands of years before that. Even the last twenty years make the twenty years before that look almost primitive.
Anyhow, another of my favourite things that this series does so well is how subtle it is with everything. Nothing is heavy-handed or thrust into your face. It’s simply there and you either notice it or you don’t, but I’d imagine you notice it more often than not. Take Kanne and Lawine for example. They fight a lot, but they’re also together a lot. There were moments where Kanne was leaning on Lawine and there were moments where they were wrestling in the background. Because of the way their characters have been developed, we accept this and almost expect it. Similarly, we saw Heiter suffering from a hangover while the other members of the hero’s party defeated a dungeon boss. They didn’t make a big thing of it, he was just there in the background trying not to vomit.
So, as for the next episode. My guess is that Fern was not successful in destroying the copy of Frieren. I think we’ve still got a lot to come and only three episodes in which to do it. I really hope they clear this before the end of the season. I also can’t help but wonder why Sense went into the dungeon. She knew about the Speigel so she would have been aware that her copy would be made.
Episode highlights
Other posts in the series
- Season One
- Episode 1 – The Journey’s End
- Episode 2 – It Didn’t Have to Be Magic…
- Episode 3 – Killing Magic
- Episode 4 – The Land Where Souls Rest
- Episode 5 – Phantoms of the Dead
- Episode 6 – The Hero of the Village
- Episode 7 – Like a Fairy Tale
- Episode 8 – Frieren the Slayer
- Episode 9 – Aura the Guillotine
- Episode 10 – A Powerful Mage
- Episode 11 – Winter in the Northern Lands
- Episode 12 – A Real Hero
- Episode 13 – Aversion to One’s Own Kind
- Episode 14 – Privilege of the Young
- Episode 15 – Smells Like Trouble
- Episode 16 – Long-Lived Friends
- Episode 17 – Take Care
- Episode 18 – First-Class Mage Exam
- Episode 19 – Well-Laid Plans
- Episode 20 – Necessary Killing
- Episode 21 – The World of Magic
- Episode 22 – Future Enemies
- Episode 23 – Conquering the Labyrinth
- Episode 24 – Perfect Replicas
- Episode 25 – A Fatal Vulnerability
- Episode 26 – The Height of Magic
- Episode 27 – An Era of Humans
- Episode 28 – It Would Be Embarrassing When We Met Again
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It has been intimated in a number of ways that, now that the Demon King is defeated, humanity’s magic has been on a substantial decline in almost every way. The speed of it is shocking, really, and now we see that Serie, who took over as head of humanity’s magic, actually wants the humans to have less of it. Something tells me this is not a coincidence. I’m not sure how she’s doing it, let alone so quickly, but my guess is she’s actually actively suppressing humanity’s magic.
Absolutely. I still can’t get around the fact that they are happy to let talented mages die in these exams. Just because they weren’t good enough this time doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have become stronger by the next one. There’s definitely some thinning of the herd going on. Frieren even commented a while back that there are less mages now.
And, now that we’ve seen Serie’s general dismay for humans using magic and how she stepped in to take control of the human magic setup, it feels like there has to be something more to it. I still don’t trust her.